Greg Kaufmann | The Nation

There are 12.5 million unemployed people still seeking work in the United States, and over 5 million of them have been looking for work for twenty-seven weeks or longer.

These are “the long-term unemployed,” and their prospects for finding employment or getting assistance are rapidly diminishing.

The long-term unemployed now make up over 40 percent of all unemployed workers, and 3.3 percent of the labor force. In the past six decades, the previous highs for these figures were 26 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively, in June 1983.

Instead of helping these folks weather the storm and find ways to re-enter the workforce, our nation is moving in the opposite direction. In fact, this past Sunday, 230,000 people who have been looking for work for over a year lost their unemployment benefits. More than 400,000 people have now lost unemployment insurance (UI) since the beginning of the year as twenty-five high-unemployment states have ended their Extended Benefits (EB) program.

What makes the denial of this lifeline all the more absurd is the reason for it. As Hannah Shaw, research associate at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), writes, “Benefits have ended not because economic conditions have improved, but because they have not significantly deteriorated in the past three years.”

It’s all about an obscure rule called “the three-year lookback.”

Under federal guidelines, for a state to offer additional weeks of benefits it must have an unemployment rate of at least 6.5 percent, and—according to the lookback rule—the rate must be “at least 10 percent higher than it was any of the three prior years.”

“Unemployment rates have remained so elevated for so long that most states no longer meet this latter criterion,” writes Shaw. She points to California as a prime example. For more than three years, its unemployment rate has remained above 10 percent, but it fails the three-year lookback test because the rate didn’t rise sufficiently. As a result, over 90,000 Californians lost their benefits on Sunday.

Prior to Congress reducing the maximum number of weeks of unemployment benefits earlier this year, there was some discussion of changing the lookback rule to four years, or even suspending it. But in the end there wasn’t the political will to do it and there certainly isn’t now.

Shaw wants people to understand the real impact that these cuts have on the long-term unemployed.

“Many of these people have been looking for work for well over a year and now their UI benefits have ended sooner than expected,” she says. “Many families rely on these benefits to make ends meet [and now] many are left with little else.”

Indeed in 2010, unemployment benefits kept 3.2 million people above the poverty line—which is roughly $17, 300 for a family of three. A report from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) gives some indication of what might lie ahead for people who exhaust their benefits.

Of the 15.4 million workers who lost jobs from 2007 to 2009, half received unemployment benefits, half didn’t, and about 2 million who did receive benefits exhausted them by early 2010. Those who exhausted benefits had a poverty rate of 18 percent, compared to 13 percent among working-age adults; more than 40 percent had incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty line (below about $35,000 for a family of three), which is the level where many economists believe people start really struggling to pay for the basics.

While one might expect to see budgetary savings from reduced unemployment insurance payments, anti-poverty advocates say a shift in demand is more likely, as more people—especially families with children—turn to other safety net programs like food stamps, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Assistance will be much harder to come by for individuals or couples without children, especially since state General Assistance programs have been decimated.

It is all the more alarming—as National Employment Law Project executive director Christine Owens testified in Congress this week—that older workers ages 50 and up are disproportionately represented in the ranks of the long-term unemployed. They made up over 29 percent of long-term unemployed workers in 2011, compared to just 26 percent in 2007. In 2011, more than 54 percent of older jobless workers were out of work for at least six months, and those high rates have continued into 2012. Owens noted that prolonged periods of unemployment can have a severe impact on older workers’ retirement prospects and later-life well-being.

In addition to legislation protecting older workers from discrimination, Owens urged Congress to invest in subsidized employment and workforce development and job training programs—vital to unemployed workers of all ages.

According to the Center for Law and Social Policy, a 2005 study of seven states found that adults and dislocated workers receiving Workforce Investment Act (WIA) services—including job training—were 10 percentage points more likely to be employed and to have higher earnings (about $800 per quarter in 2000 dollars) than those who hadn’t received services. They were also less likely to need public assistance. A 2011 study by Washington State found that WIA services boost employment and earnings for adults, dislocated workers and youth.

House Republicans are attempting to “reform” federal workforce programs through the positively Orwellian-named “Workforce Investment Improvement Act.” When they say reform, they mean pulling out their handy-dandy, favorite tool: the block grant.

“Basically, the legislation would throw funding that currently is used for specialized training programs into one big pot—and reduce the amount of money in that pot,” says Shaw.

It’s true that job-training programs need improvement but simply cutting funding and eliminating programs won’t do a thing to help anyone. What is needed is a serious effort along the lines of what economists Dean Baker of the progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research, and Kevin Hassett of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, describe in a New York Times op-ed:

Policy makers must come together and recognize that this is an emergency, and fashion a comprehensive re-employment policy that addresses the specific needs of the long-term unemployed. A policy package…should spend money to help expand public and private training programs with proven track records; expand entrepreneurial opportunities by increasing access to small-business financing; reduce government hurdles to the formation of new businesses; and explore subsidies for private employers who hire the long-term unemployed.… Managers who are filling open [government] positions should be given explicit incentives to reconnect these lost workers.

If there isn’t enough urgency for legislators and their constituents already, people should consider this: things are about to get worse. Not only did Congress fail to address the lookback earlier this year, it also made changes that will shorten the number of weeks people can receive temporary, federally funded benefits after exhausting their state-run programs. Those reductions will begin at the end of this month.

“It’s not going to be as dramatic as the end of the Extended Benefits program—there won’t be hundreds of thousands of people losing their benefits all at once,” says Shaw. “But the changes are coming down the pipeline and will affect people in every state. The UI program will look very different in a few months than it does today.”

So Rich, So Poor by Peter Edelman

When it comes to public policy and poverty in the United States, few people know more about it than Georgetown University law professor Peter Edelman. He has battled poverty for nearly fifty years, most notably as a legislative assistant to Senator Robert Kennedy and as an assistant secretary of health and human services in the Clinton administration—a post he resigned in protest over the 1996 welfare reform bill. He’s taught and written extensively on the subject, too, including his new book, So Rich, So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America.

Full disclosure: Edelman is a friend of mine and a mentor when it comes to anti-poverty work. I also had the opportunity to advise him on this book. Still, I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t value the book, nor would he want me to.

So Rich, So Poor is a sweeping historical account and analysis of anti-poverty policy that will give readers a sense of where this nation has been—and where it’s headed—with regard to confronting (or failing to confront) poverty. Edelman examines the challenges of concentrated and intergenerational poverty, the safety net, the plight of those in deep poverty, disconnected youth, low-wage work, race and gender issues, housing policy and much, much more.

If you are a layperson, the book is a chance to absorb more than you probably ever realized is at the heart of the fight against poverty; if you are someone who has long been involved in the fight against poverty, I have little doubt you will find new ideas, angles or inspiration in these pages.

This is a man who has devoted a lifetime to fighting poverty and is passing along what he’s learned. It’s a gift, frankly.

I had an opportunity to speak with him about the book and his perspective on poverty. This is what he had to say:

Greg Kaufmann: What do you hope readers get out of your book?

Peter Edelman: I hope to reach a broad audience of people who don’t know a lot about why so many people are poor in this country. I want people to understand that we’ve done a lot of things that have worked in reducing poverty, but also to understand why we still have so much poverty.

What do you say to people who respond that the reason we have so much poverty is that these programs don’t work and they are a waste of money?

The programs do work, and about 40 million more people would be poor if we didn’t have them. The problem is that we have so much low-wage work and too many people who are coping as single parents trying to live on income from one low-paying job. A second problem is that we have so many people who have incomes below half the poverty line—who are in deep poverty—and we are doing very little to help them. Since 2000 we’ve seen a rise in the number of people living in deep poverty from 12.6 million people to 20.5 million—they are living on incomes of less than about $11,000 annually for a family of four. And then we have the even more challenging problem of persistent and intergenerational poverty.

Can you say a little more about how that’s a different kind of problem to address?

Most people who are in poverty or deep poverty go in and out of those categories. But among those who are very poor, and others who remain poor for long periods of time—especially people who live in places where there is a lot of concentrated poverty—many of them have personal problems, and there’s a lot more of the consequences of inadequate education and a lack of jobs. So that whether it’s in an inner-city, or Appalachia, or on Indian reservations, or in the Mississippi Delta, we have places of poverty in this country that are even more challenging in terms of what we need to do.

What are some of the least talked-about aspects of poverty today?

The poverty problem in this country is, on the one hand, more a problem for white people than any other group; and on the other hand, it’s a problem that’s very much connected to race, and we need people to understand both sides of that.

The largest number of people in this country who are poor are white—they are the largest group. It’s also true that African-Americans, Latinos and Native Americans are poor at a rate that’s nearly three times the rate of poverty among whites. Why is that? It reflects continuing issues of race and gender. There’s disproportionate poverty among people of color because of history, continuing discrimination, structural racism in the way that our schooling is arranged for children, and the way our criminal justice system operates, and in residential patterns.

The American reaction to poverty tends to be a reflexive image of a person of color, and that in turn—because of the way our politics are structured—hurts the case for taking action. So we need to put race and gender on the table as part of the discussion.

Looking at the breadth and depth of the challenges involved in the fight against poverty, do you feel hopeful that we can rise and respond to them?

We know much more than we did at the time of the Great Society about what works, so that’s a good thing. But we do need much more political will, and we need more public understanding that these are problems that can be solved. We can help people get more income from work, we can have a better safety net, we can do a much better job of educating our children.

Some of the problems are very difficult, that’s for sure, but I think the biggest issue is for people to understand that it’s in our self-interest as a country to act. Not just because it’s morally right—although it is—but because an economy that includes everybody is going to be a better economy for everybody. It pays off economically for the whole country, not just for the people whose personal quality of life is improved. It costs us a huge amount of money in terms of lost productivity, crime-related costs and increased costs of healthcare not to act. One estimate is that we are losing at least $500 billion per year just due to the costs of child poverty.

What is the importance of the book coming out at this particular moment?

I hope that the book does some good in the context of the current election campaign—that people will want to discuss the question of inequality not just at the top, not just the 1 percent, but also the 99 percent all the way down to the bottom. The table has been set by the Occupy Movement for a national discussion of inequality that includes the reasons why people are hurting so much at the bottom as well as why some people have so much at the top. We need to talk about poverty. The p-word needs to be in the discussion.

The Economic Hardship Reporting Project

Best-selling investigative journalist Barbara Ehrenreich and the Institute for Policy Studies have launched the Economic Hardship Reporting Project to help move the crisis of poverty and economic insecurity to the center of the national conversation.

The Project aims to let unemployed, underemployed and those whose employment situations are tenuous know that they are not alone, that the current economic crisis is not their fault and that they are not always getting the information they need to find solutions. Through innovative journalism on poverty and economic hardship, reporters will tell compelling stories of individuals and families that are linked to the bigger picture—exploring extreme inequality and the decline of the middle class.

Significantly, the Project is inspired in part by the Depression-era Federal Writers Project and is collaborating with several unemployed or underemployed journalists. Freelancing is a tough road, especially right now. In recent months I’ve heard from talented reporters who have had to turn to the safety net themselves. I’ve spoken with highly accomplished journalists—whose names many of you would know—who have been asked by major media outlets to write for free just to keep their names out there (and because the outlets know they can get away with it).

“I am impatient with the standard liberal discourse on poverty,” said Ehrenreich. “We can’t go on talking about poverty without talking about how it’s being manufactured and intensified all the time.”

Ehrenreich launched the Project this week with her article, “Preying on the Poor.” I’m proud to be one of a number of advisers involved with this important effort and I hope you will follow and support it.

Video: “Still Face Experiment”

Much has been written in recent years about the link between “toxic stress” in young children and their educational, health and social outcomes later in life, as well as the public policy implications when it comes to addressing poverty. The brain is extremely pliable in the prenatal and early years, and brain architecture can be changed for the better or worse during this window. It then becomes increasingly difficult to modify over time.

For an incredible demonstration of the impact of stress on a baby—and this stress isn’t even all that toxic and lasts less than a minute—check out this video from ZERO TO THREE, a nonprofit organization working to improve the lives of infants and toddlers.

Jodie Levin-Epstein, deputy director of the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), reacted to the video this way: “From CLASP’s perspective, this video shows the fall-out from the time-poverty of parents. Fully 40 percent of working low-income parents (below 200 percent of the poverty line) have no paid time off of any kind—no parental leave, no vacation, no sick days. This is a no-brainer to fix. The US should join virtually every other nation on the globe and provide paid leave for parents. So far, the presidential candidates have not addressed this issue head-on. It’s time. And then we need to ensure good early child care.”

Get Involved

Put Childcare on the Map. Currently only about one in six children that qualify for federal child care assistance actually receives it, and it’s not on the minds of too many members of Congress. Make sure they understand just how urgent quality, affordable child care is for working families. RESULTS, the National Women’s Law Center and the Early Care and Education Consortium have launched this new long-term campaign to put child care on the map.

Raise New York’s Minimum Wage. Good news for New Yorkers: the Assembly has voted to raise the state’s minimum wage to $8.50 and index it to inflation. But Governor Andrew Cuomo has not committed to the bill, nor has he urged the Senate to pass it. The National Employment Law Project notes that the wage would be over $10.50 today if it had maintained its value since 1970. The current wage is $7.25 an hour so a full-time worker earns $15,080 annually.

“Poverty wages are good for Walmart and McDonald’s, but they’re not good for New York,” said Dan Cantor, executive director of the Working Families Party. New Yorkers can urge Governor Cuomo and Albany to take action here.

Hold the House Accountable. Last week I wrote about the cuts to “lower-priority spending” that House Republicans voted for in order to protect defense spending and tax cuts for the wealthy. The bill would slash food stamps, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, the Child Tax Credit, the Social Services Block Grant and other programs poor people rely on at a time of record poverty. In an email, the Coalition on Human Needs (CHN) writes, “The people who want to protect or increase military spending and tax breaks at the top are making their views known, day after day. We cannot be silent.” CHN is giving you the opportunity to express your displeasure or approval with your Representative’s vote here. The only way they will know we care about poverty is if we start telling them we care about poverty.

Save the American Community Survey. The House voted last week to eliminate funding for the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. It’s the only source of objective and comprehensive information about the nation’s social, economic, and demographic characteristics down to the neighborhood level. The information is used by the public, private and nonprofit sectors for everything from funding programs and assessing their effectiveness to enforcing the Voting Rights Act to delivering goods and services. You can find your Senator and tell him or her to save the American Community Survey here.

Notable Studies

“Welfare Reform: What Have We Learned in Fifteen Years?” Urban Institute & MDRC. Fifteen years after the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program replaced America’s longstanding cash-assistance entitlement, eight briefs by the Urban Institute and MDRC assess how well TANF works within the larger social safety net and to what extent it helps families receiving aid toward self-sufficiency.

“Policy Matters: Public Policy, Paid Leave for New Parents, and Economic Security for US Workers,” the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and the National Partnership for Women & Families. The report shows how paid leave policies can be viewed as proactive public investments in the health and well-being of children and families in the United States. Also, public assistance and food stamp receipt are lower for new mothers who live in states with paid leave policies.

Further Reading

“A Mom Struggles as Budget Crisis Deepens,” Dan Morain
“WPB Neighborhood Concerned About Trash and Transients,” Dan Corcoran
“The Human Disaster of Unemployment,” Dean Baker and Kevin Hassett
“Social Justice Movements in a Liminal Age,” Deepak Bhargava
“The Outlook is Still Grim for Women in the Job Market,” Bryce Covert
“For Mother’s Day: A Present that Values Families,” Hannah Matthews & Jodie Levin-Epstein
“An Alarming Number of Americans Think Poor People Are Simply Lazy,” Mandi Woodruff
“Community Struggles With Poverty Rate Twice National Average,” Spencer Platt
“Hunger Among Senior Citizens Continues to Rise,” Alfred Lubrano
“Recession Added Debt, Drained Families’ Savings,” Christine Dugas

Vital Statistics

US poverty (less than $22,314 for a family of four): 46 million people, 15.1 percent of population.

Children in poverty: 16.4 million, 22 percent of all children, including 40 percent of African-American children and 37 percent of Latino children.

Number of poor children receiving cash aid: one in five.

Poverty rate for people in female-headed families: 42 percent.

Poverty rate for children under age 5 in female-headed families: 59 percent.

Single mothers with incomes under $25,000: 50 percent.

Single mothers working: 67 percent.

Deep poverty (less than $11,157 for a family of four): 20.5 million people, 6.7 percent of population. Up from 12.6 million in 2000.

Increase in deep poverty, 1976–2010: doubled—3.3 percent of population to 6.7 percent.

Twice the poverty level (less than $44,628 for a family of four): 103 million people, roughly 1 in 3 Americans.

Families receiving cash assistance, 1996: 68 of every 100 families with children living in poverty.

Families receiving cash assistance, 2010: 27 of every 100 families with children living in poverty.

Impact of public policy, 2010: without government assistance, poverty would have been twice as high—nearly 30 percent of population.

Quote of the Week

“People want to say people on welfare are sitting around. I’ve been hustling. I’ve been begging. I’m on my knees. I cry every day. My daughter doesn’t deserve this.”
                                        —Jonetta Hall, single mother of 4-year-old Kayla

This Week in Poverty posts every Friday morning. Please comment below. You can also e-mail me at WeekInPoverty@me.com and follow me on Twitter.

To understand how 350 people—including more than 100 people from across the country who are experiencing poverty and hunger firsthand—arrived in Philadelphia last week for a conference that culminated in a call to action, you have to go back to 2008.

Dr. Mariana Chilton of Drexel University was doing cutting-edge research on the relationship between poverty and child nutrition—and the trauma of living in poverty—and testifying about her findings at the national, state and local levels.

But the hearings never included any witnesses whose very lives were the topics of discussion. Chilton also didn’t feel like her words sufficiently described the hardships that families in poverty were enduring and revealing to her in interviews.

So she gave forty-four women cameras and told them to document their experiences as “Witnesses to Hunger.” They began taking pictures—a child with an outstretched hand asking a caseworker for food; puddles of blood on the sidewalk at a bus stop; a child treated for asthma being cared for by his father who was missing work; drug paraphernalia next to a slide on the playground….

Thousands of photographs documented the experiences of families with food and health, banking and finance, work and opportunity, education, housing and energy, and access to technology. The photos were turned into an exhibit, and the women also learned to advocate for themselves at the local and state levels, and then at the federal level, too, when Pennsylvania Senator Robert Casey Jr. invited them to Capitol Hill to testify and speak with members of Congress. The women testified on issues like housing, WIC, the Earned Income Tax Credit, food stamps, child nutrition and more.

The Witnesses also began to form their own informal groups in their neighborhoods to support and counsel one another—talking together about issues ranging from food and nutrition to confronting domestic violence and past trauma; from fighting back against the stigma of being poor to navigating a welfare system that seems like a labyrinth designed to deny services; from providing childcare for one another to pooling resources to help make ends meet.

Word spread about this project that was putting the voices and experiences of people living in poverty front and center, and empowering women to overcome their despair and social isolation. Witnesses expanded to Boston, Providence and Baltimore (where one Witness is a single father). There are now seventy-three Witnesses and they have taken over 10,000 photographs and shot over 200 videos. There have been twelve formal exhibitions and many smaller showings. Currently, there is interest in starting new groups in California, Camden, Omaha, Pittsburgh and New Orleans.

With this kind of track record, it was somewhat natural for these women—and the advocates they work with at Drexel University’s Center for Hunger Free Communities, where Chilton serves as director—to break the conference mold and bring people together to pursue a new model of antipoverty work, one that builds a bridge between the advocacy community and people on the ground in low-income neighborhoods.

For three days philanthropists, advocates, researchers, journalists and government officials shared panels with Witnesses and other people living in poverty who came to the conference from as far away as San Diego and Sacramento, Denver, Oklahoma, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Nebraska, Texas, up and down the East Coast—and India.

Screenwriter Antwone Fisher was a keynote speaker. He described his experiences with trauma, homelessness and hunger, and turning his life around through telling his story.

“If you can do it, tell your story. It will be cathartic and healing,” said Fisher. “So many of us here—we could learn from one another. Some people don’t even know the kind of pain that exists…but it goes on. So if you’re in a position to tell it, just knowing that people are hungry or kids are hungry—you can do something about it.”

Gwen Ifill of Washington Week and PBS Newshour also grew up poor and said that we don’t talk about poverty “because we don’t like to talk about race.” But in her view now “race has the power to bring us together for a change, instead of driving us apart.”

She praised Witnesses for Hunger for doing its part to help people understand what is happening with poverty in America.

“The fact that you’re willing to step up and speak—and witness, I love that title, witnessing, because I think that speaks more to what we’re talking about here than almost anything else,” said Ifill. “If you don’t see it, if you’re invisible, nobody’s witnessing their misery, their need, their demands…. We don’t like ‘the other’ so much—something that seems different or alien to us. And once that’s stripped away, people begin to listen, people begin to hear, and then you can speak.”

Ifill viewed Witnesses and the people attending the conference as creating an opening for effective mobilization and political action.

“In the end it comes back to what the abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, ‘Power concedes nothing without a demand,’ ” said Ifill. “And I might add it has to be informed demand. Rosa Parks didn’t just sit on that bus, she didn’t happen to be there that day—she signed up for civil rights training first.”

In that spirit, the conference ended with a call to action. The organizers had planned to focus on one clear action—such as protecting food stamps (SNAP)—but that plan changed. Instead, people wanted a working group to devise strategies to pursue multiple goals—as well as ways for the conference-goers to stay connected with one another.

In addition to protecting SNAP, the group wants to promote and support the voices and experiences of those who know hunger and poverty firsthand; simplify the eligibility criteria across safety net programs; demand a changed culture in the human services sector so that people are treated with respect and dignity, and case workers are trained to address trauma; push for an expanded understanding of poverty that includes access to food, energy, housing, health and education; and create a national plan to end hunger in the United States.

The working group will issue a report in the coming months that will detail next steps, and I’ll certainly let readers know about that and ways to get involved. In my opinion, only through action undertaken jointly by those in poverty and those who want to eradicate poverty will a broad, bold antipoverty movement emerge.

Finally, something else very important and unique came out of this gathering. The participants from India were part of the Society for the Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) in Andhra Pradesh, Hyderbad, India. Chilton went to India last summer to see the organization’s work and explore whether its approach could work in the United States as well.

SERP supports over 900,000 village-based, self-help groups that provide employment to more than 11 million rural poor women. The women all save money as a group, and leverage those assets for larger loans from banks. Some of the self-help groups have now started feeding centers where any mother who’s very poor can come and receive three meals a day, seven days a week. They are also providing day care centers, early childhood education centers, HIV and STD education, preventative healthcare centers and many other entrepreneurial activities that are lifting people out of poverty. Whatever projects a self-help group undertakes, they continue to meet and contribute to group savings on a weekly basis, so savings becomes the constant thread for continuity through the years.

Lakshmi Durga Chava, director of Community Managed Health and Nutrition for SERP, attended the conference and visited some of the neighborhoods and homes of Witnesses, too. She had little doubt that through the structures already in place—the groups of women meeting and supporting one another through Witnesses to Hunger—SERP-like activities and group savings could be undertaken by women within their own neighborhoods. (Chava estimates that a two- to three-block radius in Philadelphia is the equivalent of a SERP-participating village.)

One Witness has already stepped forward and is forming the first group of ten women to try out this model. The women will develop their rules for saving together and lending to one another, and determine which three or four issues they want to focus on to help their community. (Those issues could be anything—from taking on slumlords to addressing special education in schools, or working on health education, for example.)

“There is hope,” Philadelphia Witness Tianna Gaines told me. “As long as we keep having this conversation, and keep having people who really want to come into the neighborhoods and find out what they are about and talk about them—we can change things. Unfortunately we have so many kids that can’t wait—so many families that can’t wait and are being lost to the system.”

Images credit: Greg Kaufmann

At an Appropriations hearing in the Illinois State House last week, the Department of Human Services (DHS) informed the legislature that it has insufficient funds to meet its Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) obligations through the fiscal year ending in June.

This is particularly disturbing since Illinois provides TANF benefits—which is cash assistance—to just 13 of every 100 families with children in poverty, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). Prior to welfare reform in 1996 the state helped nearly 87 of every 100 families with children in poverty. Further, the benefit level is only 28 percent of the federal poverty line, or roughly $4,800 annually for a family of three, similar to that in a majority of states.

According to Dan Lesser, director of economic justice at the Shriver Center in Chicago, Illinois will find the funds to pay the TANF benefits one way or another—but just how the state will do it is a significant question.

“The governor has asked the legislature for a $73 million supplemental appropriation to pay for it,” says Lesser. “Historically, supplementals are approved here when they are needed. But nowadays nothing is assured. If it’s not approved, we face a real possibility of crashing the state’s child care system.”

That’s because without the supplemental, Illinois will pay cash assistance by diverting money DHS had intended to use to fund the state’s childcare assistance program.

Under welfare reform, a state can use its federal TANF block grant in a variety of ways, including cash assistance, childcare, education and job training, transportation, aid to children at risk of abuse and neglect, and other services to help low-income families. Since the block grant was set in 1996 and isn’t indexed for inflation, those dollars don’t go nearly as far—in fact, the block grant has lost nearly 30 percent of its value since that time. Also, because it’s locked in at the 1996 funding level, the program has proven unable to respond to greater need during the recession.

Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

This inability to expand during an economic downturn came into play in Illinois, when unprecedented long-term joblessness and an increase in the number of people exhausting their unemployment benefits resulted in a greater need for TANF assistance than the state anticipated.

“Unlike many states, Illinois did not actively discourage families who were eligible for TANF during the recession from receiving it, so caseloads grew,” says Lesser.

Currently, 165,000 low-income children are in the Illinois childcare assistance program, making it possible for their parents to go to work or school. Lesser says if the supplemental appropriation isn’t approved, and funds intended for childcare are therefore diverted to meet TANF cash assistance obligations, payments to childcare providers will perpetually run one month behind schedule.

“Childcare centers aren’t very well capitalized,” says Lesser. “They don’t have access to credit, by and large. And particularly in lower-income neighborhoods this is a major source of income—there aren’t too many ‘private-pay’ children. So we’re definitely looking at missed payrolls, facility closings and thousands of families without access to childcare in the very communities that are the most vulnerable to further economic hits.”

While Democratic Governor Pat Quinn has done the right thing in requesting the supplemental appropriation, his plans for the poor aren’t all good news. Next fiscal year—which begins in July—he proposes raising parent co-payments for child care by an average of 52 percent.

“That raises $36 million all on the backs of low-income people,” says Lesser. “It will drive people out of the system, threaten providers and make it more difficult for low-income people to work.”

The governor also wants to reduce the maximum TANF eligibility from five to three years.

“Shortening time limits retroactively is bad policy in any environment, but it is really bad policy when unemployment is high,” says Dr. LaDonna Pavetti, vice president of the family income support division at the CBPP. “The people most likely to be cut off are the people least likely to find employment.”

In addition to the Shriver Center, another group pushing back on Governor Quinn’s proposal to reduce TANF eligibility is the Illinois Commission on the Elimination of Poverty. Comprised of legislators, advocates, agency representatives and individuals with particular areas of expertise, the commission was established by statute in 2008 to develop a plan to cut extreme poverty in Illinois in half by 2015. There are currently over 1.7 million state residents in poverty and close to 765,000 in extreme poverty—living below half the federal poverty line, or less than about $11,000 annually for a family of four.

It’s clear from the post–welfare reform experience that making it more difficult to access cash assistance results in an increase in deep poverty. In factf, according to the New York Times, roughly 4 million women and children are now jobless and without cash aid. Research also shows that for children in low-income families, a modest “$3,000 annual boost to family income is associated with a 17 percent increase in adult earnings” and “135 additional work hours per year after age 25.” To make that income boost harder to obtain is—at best—shortsighted.

“We need policies that help lift Illinoisans out of poverty, not push them deeper into it,” says Kimberly Drew, a Poverty Commission staffer and a policy associate with Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights. “Reducing the lifetime limit for TANF will have a devastating effect on many of our most vulnerable children and families.”

“The situation Illinois is facing is exactly what people feared would happen with a block grant,” says Pavetti. “When you have limited funds that don’t increase with need, helping poor families becomes a zero sum game and some families inevitably lose. With a fixed block grant, the only way you can provide cash assistance to more poor families is to take the money from somewhere else. In the case of Illinois, that happens to be child care. TANF is a broken system that desperately needs to be fixed.”

Finally, another piece of legislation in Illinois that would make a real difference in the lives of low-income people: a proposal to increase the minimum wage from $8.25 to $10.65 per hour over four years, and then index it to inflation. Tipped workers—currently paid only $4.95 per hour—would also be paid the new, full minimum wage. Currently, 100,000 state residents work full time, year-round, and still live below the poverty line, earning about $16,500 per year. The bill is expected to be voted on in committee next week.

This is a critical moment for people living in poverty in Illinois—hard times could get a lot harder in the coming months. If you’re a state resident, contact your representatives—tell them to oppose reducing TANF eligibility to three years; oppose raising child care co-payments; support the supplemental appropriation to pay for TANF benefits; and support raising the minimum wage.

Greenstein: Countering Safety Net Myths with Facts

At a hearing before the House Budget Committee last week, Robert Greenstein, president of the CBPP, testified on the need to strengthen the safety net. While his testimony fell on deaf ears with regard to House Republicans, that doesn’t mean his insights aren’t invaluable to the rest of us.

You can read Greenstein’s entire testimony here, but here’s a summary of some of the main points made by a guy who has been working on budget issues since 1972, and runs an outfit that knows the intricacies of policy and data as much as anyone in this town.

Greenstein cites a statistic that is a good one to remember when you hear the myths “we don’t know what to do about poverty” or “we waged a war on poverty and poverty won”: without the safety net in 2010, the poverty rate would have been 29 percent, nearly double what it is today. The Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit alone lifted 9 million people in low-income working families above the poverty line, including 5 million children. Food stamps (SNAP) lifted another 4 million people out of poverty.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan would have you believe that the safety net is in danger of becoming a “hammock,” lulling otherwise able-bodied workers to sleep and creating a culture of dependency.

But Greenstein notes that 91 percent of all spending in 2010 on federal entitlement benefits went to people who either are not expected to work because they are 65 or older or disabled, or were members of working households. Another 7 percent went “for unemployment insurance, Social Security survivor benefits for widows and orphans of deceased workers, Social Security benefits for retirees aged 62-64, or medical care.” If you add major non-entitlements—low-income housing assistance, WIC and low-income energy assistance—90 percent of benefits still go to people who are elderly, disabled or in working households.

Greenstein explores the increase in deep poverty—people living below 50 percent of the federal poverty line, or less than roughly $11,000 for a family of four—that resulted from welfare reform in 1996. Single mothers “with less education and skills and more physical, mental health, or other problems,” and children in particular took a hit as they faced deep cuts in benefits and other obstacles to getting assistance. In 1995, cash assistance under the old AFDC program lifted 2.2 million children out of deep poverty. By 2005 the TANF block grant lifted only 650,000 above that level.

One positive aspect of the safety net is SNAP (food stamps), which in 2011 cut nearly in half the number of children living below the World Bank poverty standard—less than $2 per day, per person. Without SNAP, 1.46 million households with 2.8 million children lived below the standard; but when SNAP is taken into account 800,000 households with 1.4 million children lived in these extreme conditions. (Still far more people than this country should stomach.)

“The importance of retaining the SNAP program structure alongside the TANF block grant cannot be overstated,” Greenstein writes. He also reminds that before there were national eligibility and benefit standards for the food stamp program—under President Richard Nixon—we had childhood malnutrition and related diseases in some poor areas “that were akin to those in some third-world countries”; kids with open sores that wouldn’t heal, distended bellies, complete lethargy. The House proposal to block grant SNAP—and Medicaid too—as we have done with TANF, would be tremendously regressive, resulting in the kind of inability to respond to need that we see with TANF.

Finally, Greenstein cites research showing the tremendous “beneficial effects on young children in low-income families” that result from a $3,000 increase in a family’s income, “whether the increase comes from earnings or other sources such as government assistance. These findings underscore the importance of programs such as SNAP, the EITC, and the Child Tax Credit as work supports.”

After reading Greenstein’s testimony—which I recommend reading in its entirety, since it goes into far more detail than I go into here, and it’s a great tutorial on the safety net—the actions taken by House Republicans this week on the budget were all the more striking.

Melissa Boteach, director of Half in Ten, reveals some of the choices the GOP made in an effort to avert military cuts scheduled for January 2013 under a bipartisan agreement reached last summer. These include: at least $33 billion in cuts from the SNAP program (it’s worth noting that nearly half of the program’s 46 million participants are children, and subsidies to corporate agriculture were left untouched); the elimination of the Social Services Block Grant, which helps over 11 million kids through funding for child abuse prevention and intervention, foster care and child protective services; and eliminating the Child Tax Credit for parents who pay federal income taxes using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number instead of a Social Security number. That mainly hurts American children whose parents are low-income working immigrants.

“The $1,800 the families will lose, on average, could otherwise go toward decent nutrition and stable housing—all associated with better development and school performance,” says Deborah Weinstein, executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs.

“That’s $1,800 less per year for the families of 5.5 million children—working families with incomes below the poverty level,” adds Boteach. “This at a moment when more than 1 in 5 kids are living in poverty.”

E-mails from Readers

Dear Greg,

Over the almost sixty years I have been on this earth, I have straddled social movements and seen change come about. It began with racism, moved on to include sexism, then to discrimination of disabilities and then to gay rights, not necessarily in that order. Poverty is on the horizon awaiting the chance to be the next movement. Poverty is ready to raise its voice and some of us who are living in it are prepared to speak.

You will see something quite remarkable happening with the This Week in Poverty discussion on poverty—something that seldom happens with the major media: actual poor people are being given a voice too. Readers might consider that while we poor aren’t polished academics, we are indeed experts in poverty because we live it every day. We have some know-how and may also have some ideas that could make life better for every class if we work together.

All we ask is that you respectfully listen, not “troll.” Webster’s defines trolling as posting “deliberately inflammatory articles on an internet discussion board.” Is simply disagreeing with someone “deliberately posting something inflammatory”? No. But we all know the difference between disagreeing and being inflammatory, and we should pay attention to that line.

Cat Sullivan, board member of POWER

* * *

Greg,

I just read your article, “This Week in Poverty: Will Pennsylvania Rip Another Hole in the Safety Net?” and wanted to say thanks for bringing this issue to the forefront.

As one of America’s ‘long term unemployed’ and a single ‘Adult without Dependent Children’ (AwDC), I have been stunned and saddened by the lack of resources and/or compassion for people that fall into this category, and have been writing about this for quite some time. My most recent post was published just yesterday:

“Millions of the long term unemployed are classified as ‘Adults without Dependent Children’—which simply means that they do not qualify for any assistance other than food stamps once their unemployment benefits are exhausted….

“Along with skyrocketing gas prices, food prices have also soared, leaving many with the absolute inability to feed, clothe and house themselves and/or their families without some level of assistance. The plight for those ‘AwDCs’ continues to be grim, and will only get worse if the SNAP program is cut even further while, at the same time, millions remain without meaningful work they can rely on to sustain their own existence financially.”

This is a horrifying and unbelievably humiliating situation to be in. I never in my life thought I’d find myself in circumstances such as this. I continue to be amazed at the indifference of so many in our society—as well as lawmakers at all levels—regarding the plight of so many AwDCs who now find themselves among the ranks of the homeless and very poor as a result of long term (and potentially permanent) unemployment.

Kelly Wiedemer, Denver Unemployment Examiner

Articles

“Philadelphia School District Announces its Dissolution,” Daniel Denvir
“The Fight Over Inequality,” Thomas B. Edsall
“Local Families Struggle Under Welfare Rules,” Kate Giammarise
“Hundreds March in ACT UP, Occupy Rally,” Allison Kilkenny
“Family Resource Centers, Child Abuse Prevention, Facing Cuts” Lindsey Tugman
“Where Will Homeless Go in Wake of Yuba City Park Project?” Ashley Gebb
“Big Agriculture Lobbies for Child Labor,” Anna Pycior

Other Resources

“Tavis Smiley and Cornel West,” The Colbert Report
“Protecting the Safety Net in Tough Times,” National Center for Children in Poverty
“Wage Gap: Women of Color in Difficult Times,” National Women’s Law Center
“The False Choice of National Defense Versus Helping the Poor,” CBPP
“After Foster Care and Juvenile Justice,” MDRC
“Fair Pay for Women: Increase Minimum Wage and Tipped Minimum Wage,” NWLC
“2012 United States Peace Index,” Institute for Economics and Peace
“Cracking Down on Wage Theft,” Progressive States Network

Vital Statistics

US poverty (less than $22,314 for a family of four): 46 million people, 15.1 percent of population.

Children in poverty: 16.4 million, 22 percent of all children.

Number of poor children receiving cash aid: one in five.

Poverty rate for people in female-headed families: 42 percent.

Single mothers with incomes under $25,000: 50 percent.

Single mothers working: 67 percent.

Deep poverty (less than $11,157 for a family of four): 20.5 million people, 6.7 percent of population.

Increase in deep poverty, 1976–2010: doubled—3.3 percent of population to 6.7 percent.

Families receiving cash assistance, 1996: 68 of every 100 families with children living in poverty.

Families receiving cash assistance, 2010: 27 of every 100 families with children living in poverty.

Impact of public policy, 2010: without government assistance, poverty would have been twice as high—nearly 30 percent of population.

Quote of the Week

Submitted by “Bobbolink,” a homeless person who reads this blog regularly:

“In the research of Fisk and her colleagues, people were asked how different social groups are viewed by their society. When asked a series of questions about social warmth and the competency of different social and ethnic groups, the answers clustered around four emotional responses: pity, envy, pride, and disgust. For example, people routinely react to the homeless with disgust. This is puzzling enough. You might have thought people would pity the homeless, empathize with their position, and feel sorry for them. Not at all. And in a functional MRI study, when study participants were presented with pictures of members from each social and ethnic group, the medial prefrontal cortex—the site that registers the potential for an object’s social action—popped for all but one group: the homeless. The homeless maybe seen as human, but not fully so, not as social actors.”
                  —from The Empathy Gap by J.D. Trout

This Week in Poverty posts every Friday morning. Please comment below. You can also e-mail me at WeekInPoverty@me.com and follow me on Twitter.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett unveils his 2012-13 state budget proposal before the Pennsylvania House Chamber Tuesday, Feb. 7 2012 in Harrisburg, PA. (AP Photo/Bradley C Bower)
 
If you’ve never heard of state-funded General Assistance (GA) programs, you’re hardly alone. A “safety net of last resort” for very poor people—often childless adults—who don’t qualify for other forms of public assistance, there aren’t too many of them still in existence. Not too long ago most states offered them, but in recent decades they have been eliminated or severely restricted. Now, only thirty states maintain GA programs, and the benefit level for most falls below one-quarter of the poverty line, or less than $2,750 per year.

In a recent report for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), Liz Schott and Clare Cho call this trend “especially troubling” since “a growing number of jobless and elderly” are exhausting their unemployment benefits and continue to be unable to find work.

“Poor, childless adults are becoming even more vulnerable to severe hardship than in the past and are doing so in greater numbers,” write the authors.

One state that still maintains a GA program is Pennsylvania where 68,000 people—or just about one in every 200 residents—receive about $205 per month (five counties offer a little more, twenty-eight counties a little less). But when Republican Governor Tom Corbett released his budget in February he proposed eliminating the program entirely as of July 1. A final budget must be passed and signed by that date, and with Republican majorities in the House and Senate, legal aid lawyer Michael Froehlich of Community Legal Services in Philadelphia says, “It’s not looking good.”

The prospect of the sudden elimination of the safety net of last resort is especially troubling when one considers who is eligible for it: disabled or sick adults without children; domestic violence survivors, many of whom have just fled abusers (lifetime benefit capped at nine months); adults participating in alcohol and other drug treatment programs (also capped at nine months); adults caring for someone sick or disabled, or an unrelated child; and children living with an unrelated adult. In all, over 90 percent of recipients are temporarily or permanently disabled.

“Only twelve states have GA programs for employable people, and Pennsylvania isn’t one of them,” says Schott. “It just serves unemployable people or a small number of persons for whom work is not appropriate, most of whom are children.”

The GA program also serves as a sort of bridge loan while people wait for the Social Security Administration (SSA) to consider a disability claim. Froehlich says that process may take eighteen to twenty-four months, and upon approval of the claim the SSA reimburses the state for the GA benefits it paid during the wait.

“Individuals with pending disability claims use their General Assistance as a bridge that keeps them alive while their claim is pending,” says Froehlich.

Froehlich and Community Legal Services are part of PA Cares for All, a coalition of more than 100 organizations that are trying to save the program. They press their case on both moral and economic grounds. The moral argument is pretty clear, and the coalition lays it out in a letter to state legislators: “These cuts will eliminate a lifeline for people in desperate crisis. This is not how Pennsylvanians want our government to treat abused women, people with disabilities, orphaned children, and people struggling to overcome drug addictions.”

But it’s the economic case that is perhaps more convincing in these times of budget cuts that routinely target the most vulnerable and least politically powerful people. The $205 per month enables many people to rent a room, pay for transportation to needed appointments, cover co-pays or escape abuse.

“If you eliminate the only source of income for these 68,000 Pennsylvanians overnight—folks who’ve already been determined by their doctors to be temporarily unable to work—it’s not like they are just going to disappear,” says Froehlich. “They are going to show up in the shelter system. Worst case scenario they’re going to show up in the criminal justice system.”

According to the coalition, GA’s $205 monthly payment is a bargain compared to the monthly costs that would be incurred by the state if people are left destitute: homeless shelters run $1,050 per month, per person; foster care $600 to $1,800; incarceration $2,750; and state psychiatric hospitals average $20,584.

“Why are we ditching a system that keeps people off the street and housed in favor of a shelter system that costs five times that?” asks Froehlich.

One current GA recipient, 62-year-old “Suzy,” has been receiving assistance for two years while waiting on the SSA to process her application for disability benefits. She lost her home three years ago after working as a college professor, in catering and food service, and as a tutor, and then caring for her two elderly parents until their deaths.

“I’ve had a bit of an eclectic career, but it has suited me,” she says.

After losing her home Suzy found herself on the streets—“a place I never imagined I would be.” The GA assistance enables her to rent a room in transitional housing. Even though her disability prevents her from working, she’s interviewed for jobs anyway (to no avail) because she’s so desperate for more money. She says the prospect of losing this last bit of assistance is overwhelming.

“It’s too enormous and it’s to the point where I almost go into a willful forgetfulness because I really don’t know that I can deal with it,” she says. “At this point I don’t even have money to buy a toothbrush or a toiletry, and I’m not talking fancy, the dollar store will do.”

Suzy says that a friend recently asked her what she would do if her assistance is cutoff on July 1? She replied, “Jump off a roof.” The friend told her not to do that.

“And I said, ‘You know something? I’m beyond at this point—I’m too tired. I’m beyond saying, Oh no, I won’t do that anymore.’ I just don’t know, because it leaves you with nothing and a crushing burden,” she says.

Suzy did manage to write a letter to her legislators lobbying them to vote against cutting the program, and Froehlich is hopeful that more Pennsylvanians will join in that effort and also participate in a lobbying day on May 7 as they become aware of the issue. But it’s a tough road ahead. The governor’s budget proposes significant cuts to K-12 education, higher education and programs for homelessness, mental health and other disability services. Without additional pressure, the GA program might be last in line for restored funding if any of the governor’s cuts are reversed.

Froehlich says educators, colleges, universities and human services people are all doing an excellent job turning their people out to lobby.

“But it’s very difficult for somebody who is really at the end of their rope to get on a bus, go to Harrisburg, and meet with their legislators,” he says.

What frustrates Froehlich and the coalition most of all is that none of these cuts would be necessary—to any of the programs—if the Legislature would take up the revenue side of the equation. For starters, a planned phased reduction of a corporate “capital stock and franchise tax” beginning this year could be delayed; and corporate loopholes could be closed—like “the Delaware loophole,” which allows three out of four companies in Pennsylvania to avoid paying state taxes by claiming a Delaware address. These loopholes represent billions in potential revenues, while the state’s Department of Public Welfare estimates that eliminating the GA program will save just $150 million per year.

“I’m bewildered by these people, I really, really am,” says Suzy. “They are just throwing people away. I guess it’s their solution for the poor, if everybody just dies then that pesky, pesky, little problem will go away.”

TANF: Front-Page New York Times and More

New York Times reporter Jason DeParle did his characteristic outstanding job showing the severe limits of the welfare system—in this case, what happens to single mothers and their children when they can’t get Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits, or cash welfare. He does a real service by challenging this assertion by President Bill Clinton’s in 1997: “The debate is over. Welfare reform works.” DeParle notes that this “image of success formed early and stayed frozen in time.”

But the fact is that prior to welfare reform in 1996, 68 of every 100 poor families with children received cash assistance through Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). By 2010, with federal spending capped at 1996 levels and states having discretion about eligibility and time limits, just 27 of every 100 poor families received TANF assistance, and benefits in most states are less than 30 percent the federal poverty level. Simply throwing people off of welfare does not success make, and DeParle notes that just one in five poor children now receives cash aid and the average benefit is $350 per month for a family of three.

DeParle vividly depicts an underground economy where single mothers without TANF “have sold food stamps, sold blood, skipped meals, shoplifted, doubled up with friends, scavenged trash bins for bottles and cans and returned to relationships with violent partners—all with children in tow.”

While this story might not be new to Nation readers, it is nonetheless important to see it on the front-page of the Times at a moment when welfare seems completely off the political radar unless a Republican presidential candidate says something totally ignorant or provocative, and even then the debate is limited and doesn’t seem to sustain much beyond the news cycle.

But there is another significant part to this TANF story that DeParle doesn’t go into: that same desperation that forces women who are denied benefits to turn to an underground economy is also present for women and children who are in the TANF system. It’s a system that traps women in low-wage work, and they look for alternative means to survive. The entrepreneurship and the bonds that develop between women as they fight to improve their situation is something that could be harnessed, encouraged and supported through a reformed TANF, rather than punished.

The last couple of months I’ve been researching the experiences of single mothers on TANF in Philadelphia—experiences that seem similar to those of women in many cities. I’ll be writing in more detail about it in coming weeks, but here are some general observations on how many end up trapped in low-wage work and turn to an underground economy.

TANF reauthorization in 2005 made it more difficult for recipients who want to improve their job skills to count education toward their work requirement. Instead, they are channeled to for-profit training programs that contract with the city—to train as medical assistants, for example. Completion of the training program doesn’t necessarily lead to a job, and if it does it isn’t anything close to a living wage job. Sometimes the training program is then repeated with the same disappointing result.

Another option is “community service.” These volunteer jobs often involve filing or cleaning and the women don’t receive paychecks, just welfare benefits. One company benefiting from this labor is Comcast, which has TANF recipients cleaning toilets in the Comcast Building. An advocate calls it “being an indentured servant”—paying off benefits with no paycheck as long as women remain on TANF.

In the event a woman finds a better job that pays her more than welfare she sometimes faces a conundrum. She’s still eligible for subsidized childcare but she has to get on a long waiting list—I’ve heard months to years—because TANF participants receive priority. Without affordable, reliable childcare, the pay raise might be negligible or even a net loss. It can also lead to children being placed in childcare situations that increase the risk of abuse or neglect.

In these instances, a parent might choose to stick with the low-wage or “community service” job that provides childcare.

Needing more cash for their families to survive, some women in Philadelphia turn to the underground economy. Side businesses pursued by women on TANF include: hair-braiding; selling used clothes out of the front door; setting up a thrift shop on the corner with knick-knacks, household items, pots and pans, stuffed animals; making dinners and selling them off the front porch; doing nails; housekeeping for mildly wealthier friends; the extreme is prostitution and drug dealing.

The extra cash can’t be put in a bank—the maximum amount of assets one can own and still remain TANF-eligible is just $1000 in Pennsylvania, including all bank accounts, cash and property that isn’t one’s home residence. So that extra cash often gets hidden in a bra, or underneath a mattress, or is immediately used for shoes, food or something else for the kids. Another problem is that if there is too much cash around it’s very likely it will be stolen or lost. So it’s common to purchase something that’s hard to steal or that can be resold out the front door in a jam.

Dr. Mariana Chilton is a co-principal investigator for Children’s HealthWatch and founder of Witnesses to Hunger. Women in Witnesses to Hunger use photographs and stories to document their experiences in poverty and learn to advocate for change at the local, state and federal levels. These single mothers also form groups in their own neighborhoods to support and counsel one another as they navigate the system. There are forty-four participants in Philadelphia, and dozens more on the East Coast.

“People assume that women in TANF are stupid, lazy, inarticulate and passive—and that couldn’t be further from the truth,” says Chilton. “These ladies may not think of themselves as entrepreneurs, but they are, and they can make a huge difference in their own lives and communities if the environment were right. TANF is not setting up the right environment.”

Chilton proposes that TANF test a group micro-lending project that would build wealth through financial literacy training, nutrition education, access to banking services and microfinance in the form of small loans of less than $1200. These efforts would be undertaken by groups of ten to fifteen women who would meet weekly to encourage each other to save funds, repay loans and provide social support. Business ideas that would be supported include hair braiding, providing childcare, janitorial and housekeeping services, home decorating, catering, operating Internet cafés or small retail stores, tailoring and making specialty gifts. Measurable outcomes would include indicators of the families’ ability to lift themselves out of poverty, and improved health among mothers and their children.

Chilton has spoken with individuals at the Pennsylvania Department of Welfare and the US Agency for Children and Family Services and representatives have expressed openness to the project.

“We know through Witnesses to Hunger that there is power in the group—we’ve been keeping these various groups together for almost four years now,” she says. “When a group of three or more women really bonds together, the power in the room is enormous. Because there’s an enormous amount of resource sharing, energy, support and camaraderie, it helps them overcome their social isolation. They are very disempowered by the isolation. When they come together they actually see that they have a lot of power: they help each other, they provide advice, they pool their resources and money, they provide childcare, they do all different kinds of things.”

Chilton’s idea is partly influenced by the Society for the Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) in Andrha Pradesh, Hyderbad, India. It supports over 900,000 self-help groups providing employment to over 10 million rural poor women and implementing World Bank–assisted poverty alleviation projects. Some of the women have now started feeding centers, for example, where any mother who’s very poor can come and receive three meals a day, seven days a week.

On May 2–4 in Philadelphia, SERP representatives and participants from India will be joining Chilton and Witness to Hunger participants at the Beyond Hunger: Real People, Real Solutions conference. (More information below in “Upcoming Events.”) A lot of times people go to anti-poverty conferences and say that they hear too much from guys like me, and not enough from the people actually living through these hardships. This definitely won’t be that kind of conference.

I’ll be there though, and I hope readers will consider coming too. It’s a great opportunity to learn a lot about the challenges faced by low-income people in America today, and how we can create a system that truly supports opportunity, self-sufficiency and community.

Recent Stories from TheVoicesOfPoverty.org

Disabled Vietnam War veteran John France lives in Hawaii with his wife Stephanie. They live in a pink wooden house, built on the edge of the bush. Not on the grid, they get power from a generator and water from a local public well. They can only afford to run their generator two hours a day, meaning they go to bed at 7 or 8 o’clock in the evening, when the light runs out. Their major desire in life? Electricity. Their major fear? Growing old and having to carry heavy loads of water to the house each day.

Sixty-three-year-old Emily Kamali recently paid off her small house located deep into the backroads of Hawaii’s Big Island. The landscape is lush, the house chaotic. Dogs roam the yard; the small living area is filled with bric-a-brac. Kamali and her husband live on a few hundred dollars a month in Social Security and a couple hundred dollars’ worth of food stamps. Routinely, the money runs out before the end of the month; when that happens, the generators go off and they use candles; they eat out of cans, and they rely on friends to make ends meet. Abused as a child, Kamali has had an unremittingly hard life. Recently, when her granddaughter got married, she shaved her head into a mohawk and dyed it purple. It makes her smile, makes her forget some of the accumulated pain.

Get Involved

Coalition of Immokalee Workers 2012 Northeast Tour. Farm workers from Immokalee and their allies in the student and faith communities head north up I-95 to Washington, Philadelphia, New York and Boston. Join them as they keep the heat on supermarket chains Stop & Shop and Giant, as well as Chipotle, for their refusal to partner with farmworkers and support the CIW’s Fair Food Program. Whole Foods, McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway and many others have already signed onto the program.

99% Spring Action Training. From April 9–15, 100,000 people will train to tell the story of our economy, learn the history of nonviolent direct action, and use that knowledge to take action and win change. You can find an event here.

“Protest Like It’s 1991” with the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) on April 17, Equal Pay Day, in Washington, DC. Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Donna Edwards have introduced legislation that would raise the tipped minimum wage—it’s been stuck at $2.13 an hour since 1991. The increase is opposed by the National Restaurant Association (the other NRA) and Republicans despite the fact that waiters and waitresses have three times the poverty rate of the rest of the US workforce. ROC will protest the NRA’s public affairs conference where Speaker John Boehner will keynote. 11 am, NRA Headquarters, 1200 17th St. NW. For more information contact ROC.

Upcoming Events

The Impact of Poverty on Education, Thursday, April 19, 1–3 pm at 106 Senate Dirksen Building, Washington, DC. Four experts provide different perspectives on the impact of poverty on educational attainment and resulting implications for federal policymaking. Sponsored by the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education and the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education.

Beyond Hunger: Real People, Real Solutions: May 2-4, Doubletree Hotel, 237 South Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Registration is $399. Scholarships are available for low-income participants and organizations seeking financial assistance. Get to know researchers, funders, Congressional staffers, journalists, government leaders, Sesame Street, micro-financiers, youth poets and people who know hunger and poverty first-hand. Keynote speakers include Antwone Fisher, author and filmmaker, and Gwen Ifill, managing editor of Washington Week and senior correspondent and co-anchor for PBS NewsHour.

RESULTS International Conference: Early Bird Discount ends this Monday, April 16. Conference is July 21–24 in Washington, DC. The conference offers inspiring, high-level speakers; educational workshops on effective poverty solutions; advocacy skills trainings; and lobbying on Capitol Hill on domestic and international poverty issues.

Notable Studies

“Self-Inflicted Wounds,” Coalition on Human Needs. This report has some of the only estimates of how the automatic (“sequestration”) cuts slated for January 2013 would impact human needs programs. Page 21 in particular includes a comparison of the revenues generated by passing the Buffett Rule ($171 billion over ten years) to the dollar value of proposed cuts in the food stamp program; elementary, secondary and special education; and Head Start, among other programs. The Senate is scheduled to take up the Buffett rule next week.

“Impact of Food Stamps on Family Homelessness in New York City,” Institute for Children, Poverty and Homelessness (ICPH). In 2010, 50% more New York City families received SNAP benefits than at the start of the recession in 2007. Unfortunately, these benefits are calculated without accounting for the city’s higher cost of food. This brief outlines how families at risk of homelessness are struggling to balance adequate nutrition with housing costs.

“The Assets Report 2012,” New America Foundation. Every year the federal government allocates hundreds of billions of dollars of resources to support a range of activities to help families move up the economic ladder and increase their economic security. Yet most of these benefits are delivered through tax subsidies that favor higher-income households. Families with lower incomes and fewer resources, who would benefit the most, receive a fraction of the support.

Further Reading

“Welfare Limits Left Poor Adrift as Recession Hit,” Jason DeParle
“Identifying Who’s Poor in Minnesota and Why,” Cynthia Boyd
“Is Marriage a Poverty Buster?” Jodie Levin-Epstein
“Which Came First—Poverty or Teen Pregnancy?” Marisa Nightingale
“Nobody Goes it Alone,” Kirsten Lodal
“You’re on Your Own, Kids: The End of Welfare as We Know It,” Robert Scheer

Special Thanks

Thanks to the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) for awarding This Week in Poverty a 2012 NASW Media Award.

Vital Statistics

US poverty (less than $22,314 for a family of four): 46 million people, 15.1 percent of population.

Children in poverty: 16.4 million, 22 percent of all children.

Number of poor children receiving cash aid: one in five.

Poverty rate for people in female-headed families: 42 percent.

Single mothers with incomes under $25,000: 50 percent.

Single mothers working: 67 percent.

Women over 65 living without economic security: 60 percent.

Deep poverty (less than $11,157 for a family of four): 20.5 million people, 6.7 percent of population.

Impact of public policy, 2010: without government assistance, poverty would have been twice as high—nearly 30 percent of population.

Quote of the Week

“It is a cautionary tale that dropping people back on the street does not give them hope, it just turns them fairly desperate. All of these holier-than-thou and sanctimonious politicians—don’t sit there and point fingers at the people that you’ve turned your backs on who are simply trying to survive.”
      —“Suzy,” during interview regarding General Assistance program

This Week in Poverty posts every Friday morning. Please comment below. You can also e-mail me at WeekInPoverty@me.com or follow me on Twitter.